


by the light of the moon

by sonhoedesrazao



Series: Skam ficlets [4]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 06:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10457490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonhoedesrazao/pseuds/sonhoedesrazao
Summary: He writes notes sometimes. Still.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Words](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFw7AaBxatA) by Gregory Alan Isakov. Read on [Tumblr](http://sonhoedesrazao.tumblr.com/post/158793195668/by-the-light-of-the-moon-he-writes-notes)!
> 
> You can also find a Russian translation [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5588539)!

He writes notes sometimes. Still.

At first, it was a way to say things he couldn’t—shouldn’t. You’re hot when you sleep, he wrote, even as his mind whispered a warning. With a note he let Isak know he missed him. With a drawing he apologized for not replying to his message. With a text he told Isak he loved him.

But now Isak was here, and his to love, and Even didn’t need to write notes.

His boyfriends likes his drawings, though, and it’s so easy to surprise him with a page under the pillow or stuck in his textbook—the two of them doing something planned or on a wild date he has in mind—or to draw inside jokes on the fogged bathroom mirror every day for weeks on end.

“Doctor’s orders,” he admitted one day.

Isak grinned. “Drawing me naked?”

Drawing anything. Writing his thoughts. Coping mechanism, they called it. Well, Even did this before it was called anything—before he was diagnosed, his mind already a confusing place, filled with bright ideas and dark paths in equal measure. If he could withdraw the thoughts, jumbled as they were, and set them down, maybe they would leave him be. For a while he dared hope being with Isak would ease the tangle in his head, but it wasn’t that easy, was it?

Besides, Isak is not a solution to a problem. He just is, and whatever Even is himself, he needs to find a way to live with it. 

“Do you write other things?” Isak asked then, and Even would never lie to him.

So, yes. He did. And since then, the ritual goes like this:

At night, lying in bed after exhausting one another’s body, they face each other in the quiet darkness.

“What did you write today?” Isak will ask, a hand tracing his naked shoulder and trailing down his arm.

“It makes no sense,” Even will reply, the words muffled against the pillow.

“Show me anyway.”

So he turns and grab his notebook, or a few crumpled pages in the bottom of his backpack, or a napkin he scribbled on during lunch. He places the pages between them. Sometimes it’s drawings, accompanied by disconnected words which barely make sense even to him. They’ll play a game then, another one of Isak’s that’s meant to keep him grounded: guess what Even was thinking about.

“This road represents your desire to run away with me,” Isak says.

Or: “These spirals are about my hair, aren’t they? I know you can’t keep your hands off it.”

And: “Twenty one—this is the number of French movies you forced me to watch this week, and you feel guilty about it.”

“Tell me more, doctor,” Even says, a smile crinkling his eyes, fondness filling every corner of his heart.

But sometimes he writes more. Sentences. Confessions. Fears. This is too good to last. I’m scared of what I might do. I feel so much about everything I think I’ll crack open one day.

These are the times he says, “Don’t read them now,” and Isak only nods and sets them aside. When Even’s asleep, he’ll take them to the windowsill and pour through them, and in the morning they’ll be back in his backpack:

His notebook with a scribbled heart.

The crumpled pages lovingly straightened.

The napkins stuck carefully between the pages of a textbook.

Isak never asks questions, no matter what he reads. But he’ll linger a moment longer in their morning kisses, hold him a little tighter, whisper something sweet before they part ways at school. 

And some nights, after days when his mind felt too empty and worn out to draw anything from, Isak will say, “This is what I wrote today.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] by the light of the moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10559554) by [Jinxy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinxy/pseuds/Jinxy)




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